Short version of my PDX/SEA trip:
Robyn and Grant-Lee were awesome. Fegs are the greatest.

Long Version:

Here goes.

We boarded the plane with a minimum of inconvenience and were sitting in
our assigned seats when I looked up and saw Grant-Lee Phillips coming
through the cattle line. I alerted Chris and as he was on the aisle he
was able to peek up the line and look for our man. Sure enough, Robyn
strolled right past us looking - as he often does - as though he was in
his own world. GLP and RH settled into their assigned seats in the back
of the plane amongst the screaming babies and the diarrhea-afflicted. I
didn’t like seeing that. “Put those men in First Class!” I yelled, but
I was quickly subdued by the smell of our seat mate eating his leftover
Chinese food. I hung my head and sighed. “I did my best” I muttered
with my best Iron Chef humility. After we took off I cracked open the
Nick Drake biography which was a recent birthday gift. For some family
background, it starts off with a short mention of the shipyard where the
Titanic was built. I took note of the ominous nature of the text and it
got me thinking: While I usually take time to evaluate whether or not
this would be an OK time in my life to go down in a plane crash,
crashing this flight would especially suck due to the higher than normal
cult figure-to-normal Joe ratio. I rationalized our impending fiery
deaths by figuring we would at least be footnotes in the annals of Feg
history.
Upon landing in Portland, Chris rushed off the plane to alert Jeme as to
the especially noteworthy passengers who were about to deplane. I
waited on board; I’m usually the last one off the plane for reasons that
will become obvious shortly, if they aren’t already. The top of my head
blew off when the “light rock” they were pumping through the 737’s PA
system consisted of Katrina and The Wave’s “Walking on Sunshine”!
Surely this will bring a smile to Robyn’s face, right? I turned in my
seat and spotted him coming up the aisle. Indeed he was singing to
himself, but as he got closer to me I noticed he really wasn’t paying
much attention to the surrounding music. Oh well, I thought it was
funny anyway. I was summoned to the front of the plane when my
wheelchair arrived from the cargo hold. I made my way forward and sat,
then got a friendly boost up the jetway from Chris. (Side Note: Did I
ever tell you that I went to Spain a few years ago? Well in Spain they
call the jetway “The Finger”. I explained to the Spanish flight
attendant that in America we call something else “The Finger”.) As we
got out into the terminal I noticed I was sinking horribly into my
chair, as if caught ass-first in a Venus Fly Trap. I explained to Chris
that I should probably duck into the men’s room to evaluate the
situation. I discovered that the Herculean baggage handlers at PDX had,
while attempting to unfold the chair, sheared the heads off four of the
six screws that hold the seating panel to the body of the chair. I
tentatively resumed the ass squeezing and exited the bathroom to find
that Jeme had finally met up with Chris. I explained the situation and
Jeme took charge immediately, as he is wont to do. He discovered that
we needed to go down to Baggage Claim and file a report or something.
We did so and, long story short, assuaged the problem using the
ubiquitous plastic zip-tie. We made sure to grab extras as we
unanimously concluded that they would not hold up under my fat ass.
Needless to say, they were changed out routinely throughout the
weekend.

I was a
bit annoyed by the sound at the Aladdin. It was rather cavernous, and
for some reason Robyn’s vocal on “Queen Elvis” had way too much echo on
it. I liked the rendition of “Gene Hackman” though, and also Robyn’s
improv of Eddie’s request for “Bitchin’ Camaro”, which was interpreted
on stage as “Changing Into Maryland”. A particular highlight was when
jbj placed his full height traffic cone on stage before the first
encore. Grant entered first to solo on “Happiness” and proceeded to do
half the song seated at the piano with the cone on his head.

Part II Coming soon…

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